Pleasure For Pleasure (15 page)

“You wouldn't dance with me,” pouted the willowy man.

“Count yourself lucky,” Mayne said. “I know what a terrible dancer she is, and so I've already braced myself—and my toes.”

“No one who moves with such grace, such elegance, could be a poor dancer,” the orange waistcoat said mournfully, as Josie left on Mayne's arm.

Which she was pinching as hard as she could. “How dare you say such a thing? Now no one will wish to dance with me!”

“In that dress, they would dance with you if you were using a cane. In fact, I'm only worried that you'll be stolen from me as we dance.”

Josie giggled. It was wonderful to feel seductive and beautiful, and be here, laughing on the arm of the man whom she thought (privately) to be the most handsome man in the
ton
.

“Mind you,” he said a moment later, after she trod on his foot again, “you
do
have two left feet. What's the matter? Didn't you pay any attention to that dancing master Ewan lured up to the north country?”

She blushed a little. “I can't help it. I'm horribly awkward, in truth. I don't enjoy dancing very much.”

“I'll come find you later, when they've turned to waltzes,” Mayne said, dancing her out of the circle and off the dance floor. “You might want to just stand about and allow your suitors to ogle your bosom rather than dance with them. At least until the waltzes start.”

“I'm even worse at waltzing.”

“Well, you'll have to merely accept admiration,” Mayne
said cheerfully. “I should probably try to find Sylvie, although I suspect that I know her location.”

“Where?” Josie asked, glancing around. “What's she wearing?”

“Yellow,” he said. “And a black mask.”

“Griselda demanded a black mask as well.”

A tall man with appreciative eyes and a lock of brown hair falling over his forehead paused beside them. “Skevington,” Mayne said, “may I entrust you with Miss Essex? I thought I'd poke about and find my fiancée, and of course Miss Essex's chaperone is lost in the crowd.”

Skevington had a quite charming smile. “Nothing would give me more pleasure,” he said, bowing.

“Skevington over-dresses,” Mayne said, waving at the man's embroidered waistcoat. “But it's not a mortal sin.”

Josie smiled up at her new companion. “'Tis far worse to be over-opinionated.”

“To be over-enthusiastic is surely a mortal sin,” Skevington said. He showed no pique at the slur to his waistcoat, and Josie liked him the better for it. “At the risk of showing great over-enthusiasm, Miss Essex, may I request a dance?”

“In truth, I would prefer to walk from this room,” she said.

Skevington had a lean, intelligent face with kind eyes. They left Mayne, and Josie did not glance back, just walked with her new sultry sway and hoped he was watching.

Then she couldn't bear it and turned her head.

He was gone.

T
hurman thought masks were a rotten idea. How could he build a reputation if no one knew who he was?

He'd caught sight of Darlington; his features were unmistakable. Darlington was leaning against the wall of the ballroom, and by concentrated attention, Thurman was able to see that he was watching Lady Griselda Willoughby dance with Mr. Riffle. He had to grin at that. Darlington was losing his twig if he thought that Lady Griselda would marry him. True, she had one of the neatest estates on this side of Hampshire, but she would never interest herself in a loose screw like Darlington.

Wasting his time, Thurman thought. But he had no time for Darlington. Darlington was yesterday's news, and he was bursting with the ambition to make himself into Darlington's successor. He was already in a good way to doing
it. Last night he'd gone to the Covent Garden Theater and surreptitiously written down a number of clever remarks. Then this morning he'd gone to St. Paul's and hung around the middle aisle, where all the clever inns of court men came to gossip, and he'd picked up even better scraps and fragments. He had them all snugly written down, and he'd already used two to great effect.

Of course, no one knew who he was, so he'd have to think of tonight as something of a practice run. But that was all right. It took timing to get a jest right. When he first came in, he'd told Lady Mucklowe that the only happy marriages these days were to be found among the servants. That line garnered laughter in the theater the previous night, but somehow it didn't work with Lady Mucklowe, who stared at him, and said, “Young man, I am relieved that I do not know who you are; I should dislike having to reproach myself for inviting you.”

Thurman was relieved by her ignorance as well. But after that, two jests that he'd heard in St. Paul's had gone over very well to little groups, and one of the men had said, “By Jove, that's quite clever!”

He had an excellent line to do with courtship in mind, and so he prowled around until he found a large circle of people standing just inside the windows leading to the garden. Thurman didn't really approve of that; his mother had been adamant that night air might give her darling son a chill of the lungs, and he had always listened to his mother. But driven by an ambition stronger than self-preservation, he strolled up to the circle.

With the mask, it was all very easy. He simply walked up as if he belonged there. He found that the circle was clustered around a young lady who was sitting on the library table in such a way that her ankle was perfectly visible.

It was a nice ankle, Thurman saw with a glance, but it stood to reason that the young lady was not all that she
could be. Manners are a lady's best defense against impropriety, his mother used to say, shutting her lips tight.

Likely
this
young lady wouldn't mind a racy joke or two. Thurman took in the ravishing nature of her dress, her vivid chestnut hair, luminous white skin, and lips the color of spring raspberries. She was laughing with a deep, husky chuckle that made it clear she was no chaste maiden.

They were all talking about some Shakespeare play being put on at the Hyde Park Theater. “I shouldn't want to see it,” Thurman put in. “The very name Shakespeare sends shivers down my spine. Memories of Rugby, you know.”

“I was frightfully idle when I was at school,” Skevington said (for Thurman recognized him due to his height). “I'm afraid I couldn't recite more than a line or two to save my life.”

Of course, Skevington went to Eton. “Gentlemen know whatever they need without books,” Thurman said, “and if one's not a gentleman, then whatever one learns is bad for him.”

The girl turned her head and looked at him. She had large eyes, thickly fringed with lashes. Christ, she's beautiful even with a mask on, Thurman thought, though normally he wasn't one who paid much attention to these things. A bit too fleshy for his taste. He let himself eye her rather boldly, because after all, she was clearly not a lady.

“I think I'd like to go into the garden,” she said, sliding off the table without waiting for a gentleman to extend his hand. Another sign of her lack of training.

So they all drifted into the garden, she carrying them along like the petals of a flower. Thurman was thinking that he really ought to go find another group to practice his lines on; he had a good one saved up about a mother's love, when Skevington said something that made him stiffen all over.

He had the girl's arm, and he was walking just in front of them. A couple of the fellows had drifted off, and only three
of them were trailing after. “Miss Essex,” Skevington said, perfectly clearly, “would you like to return to the…”

But Thurman didn't hear the rest over the roaring in his ears. It was the Sausage: it was. She'd done something to herself. She'd changed herself.

She'd stopped being a sausage and become this—this ravishingly insouciant girl whose curves were practically making Skevington kiss her toes.

He stopped short and watched Skevington draw her back to the house. All of a sudden the frustrations of the last few days crashed into his mind again. The Scottish Sausage was about to become the toast of the season; he could see that.

She was still the Sausage, though. Now that he looked at her, she was as plump as ever—plumper even. Disgusting. Mother always said that women should eat like birds; they didn't need the same strength that men do.

Someone should tell her that she couldn't just swan around like that, thinking that no one would notice that she was even fatter than before.

He might even be the very person to do it.

W
ithin ten minutes Griselda had lost Josie. And that was annoying, not because she felt any particular urge to chaperone Josie too closely, but because Josie was wearing a dazzling gown, delivered that very afternoon by Madame Rocque, and Griselda would have loved to judge its reaction.

Josie's eyes had shone like stars when she realized that the ball was an impromptu masquerade. “No one will know I'm the Sausage,” she had breathed in Griselda's ear.

“No one would ever think such a thing in that gown,” Griselda had said back. Josie was all curves and beauty and youth. Her seductiveness struck one in the face, at least if one were quite as tired as Griselda felt. She was conscious of muscles that she didn't know she owned, and they were all twinging.

By two hours later she was even more tired. Josie was a tremendous success, and Griselda had every belief that most of her newfound suitors would hotly pursue her on the morrow, mask or no mask.

“Superb planning,” the Duke of York boomed as he passed Griselda in the corridor, his hand plumply encased in that of an actress from the Adelphi Theater. She knew who he was, of course; the duke was wearing his commander-in-chief uniform, fringe and gold braid everywhere, with his ceremonial sword dangling at his side. Apparently he thought she was his hostess, Lady Mucklowe.

Far be it from her to correct him. “I'm gratified to hear it, Your Royal Highness,” she murmured, curtsying so deeply that her knee almost touched the ground. York hastened off after the actress, his stays visibly creaking as he trotted along. Behind him billowed a cloak with yards of deep gold fringe, gold frogs, and a red taffeta lining.

“Do you suppose that he has the Order of the Bath embroidered on his undergarments?” came a husky voice at her ear.

Her mouth curved into a welcome smile without conscious volition, and her heart started beating quickly.

“One has to assume that someone is making those garments,” he said, his hand warm on her back. She was walking with him before she realized what she was doing. “Smalls, by order of His Highness.”

She gave a gurgle of laughter.

“I know what you're thinking,” he said into her ear. “Smalls that aren't so small, eh?”

“You, sir, should be out looking for a wife.”

“I could say the same to you of a husband. Alas, I can't tell one heiress from the next.”

“You managed to find me without any trouble.”

“I saw your hair the moment I entered the door.”

Her heart was beating quickly. “This is not what we planned!”

“Life is full of tempting surprises. You look ravishing, enticing, and a wee bit fatigued.”

Griselda bit her lip. It was because she was all of thirty-two.

“God knows I am,” Darlington continued. “Muscles ache in areas that I don't generally think about.” He whispered in her ear, “My ass. Who knew that was so exercised by our activities last night?”

“I did,” she murmured back, unable to resist. She could feel herself turning pink.

Now she knew where they were going. After all, she'd been to Lady Mucklowe's parties before. Slowly but steadily, he was steering her through the second ballroom and toward the French doors, and then (she would guess) out into the garden. “I'm not going into the garden with you,” she said, digging in her heels.

“I wasn't asking you to,” he said, unperturbed.

“I'm not going anywhere in private,” she said, panicking. He was too luscious, and she was too weak, or perhaps it was the other way around. She had to look for a spouse, and so did he. “I saw Cecily Severy,” she hissed at him. “She's wearing dark lavender.”

“An old maid pressed in dark lavender,” he sang, dreadfully off-key but perfectly audible.

“Hush!” she said, choking back a laugh.

“Was surprised to marry someone not of her gender.
I've never seen such a thing!
”

Griselda was giggling hopelessly.

“Here, take back your ring!”
he caroled. And then, putting on a commanding voice: “
I won't,
her groom cried,
you must surrender!
”

They were in the corridor, and before she could tell him that ditties were supposed to rhyme and actually be funny, he pulled her against him.

“Oh,” she said, and the laughter died. He was kissing her desperately, and yet the taste of laughter was in his mouth, because it always was.

“Surrender,” he growled at her.

“No!” she said, her breath coming in quick gasps. “I'm a chaperone—I have to see what Josie's—I have to—”

“She's fine,” Darlington said, his tongue curling a burning line on her throat.

But Griselda took a deep breath and pushed him away. She straightened her mask with unsteady fingers. “I do not kiss at balls, ever,” she told him. “I do not engage in this kind of behavior. I'm sorry, but our…our tryst is over.”

She turned to leave, but he stopped her. “Take me to my fate.”

“Who shall it be?”

He shrugged. “You choose.”

“Cecily Severy,” she said after a moment. “'Tis markedly improper of me to say so, but she's a very kind woman, and a lovely one.”

“She lisps.”

“We discussed that already.”

He pulled her close again, but not too close. “She's scrawny,” he whispered. “Do you know I haven't been able to think of anything but you all day? I can't go from your body to one of those scrawny debutantes.”

“The first thing you are going to do,” Griselda said, pretending she didn't hear him, but actually filing away the words as memories she could treasure later, “is bring my Josephine into fashion.”

“I owe you that,” he said.

“You owe
her
that. And yourself,” she added.

She led the way into the first ballroom and stopped in the door. It was a welter of ruby and saffron and peacock blue silks, dotted as if with pepper by black masks.

“Christ,” Darlington muttered, just low enough so that she could hear it, “this is enough to persuade me to take up Brummell's mode of dress.”

Griselda had just glimpsed Josie in the corner. “I want you to meet Miss Essex.” She thought Darlington uttered a little groan, but she wasn't sure. No one likes to be presented with his crimes.

And as they came up to Josie, she couldn't help grinning. Griselda had no idea how or why the transformation had happened, but when Josie decided to accept the nature of her God-given body, she had done so with a vengeance. Rather than wear her hair down, like so many debutantes, she had scooped it all on her head, great curlicues of shining hair held in their place by diamond clips given to her by Tess. The dress delivered by Madame Rocque was really too risqué for a debutante, Griselda thought. She should have put her foot down.

It wrapped Josie's body like a kiss, all dusky violet with a low neck marked by the smallest ruffle standing up around the bodice. Rather than attempt to give her the sticklike figure that the current fashion demanded, Madame Rocque had clothed her in a way that showcased her woman's body. Next to her, all the floating gowns caught up with ribbons under tiny pert breasts looked boring.

Josie looked sultry, dangerous, erotic—and at the same time, young, fresh, and beautiful. She was like sin packaged and made young again.

“Christ,” Darlington said, stopping dead.

Griselda had a sudden pang. What was she doing, introduc
ing Darlington to Josie? Of course, he would—he would—But he didn't look like a man transfixed by lust. Instead, he was frowning down at her.

“What in the hell did you do to that girl?” he whispered.

Josie was flirting with four gentlemen at once, handling them with the aplomb of a woman who'd been on the market for several years, and who had spent her entire life being feted for her beauty.

“Nothing,” Griselda whispered back. “Behold the lovely girl whom you labeled a sausage!”

“Not fair,” he said. “You're not playing fair, Lady Godiva, and I'll have to take a forfeit.” His voice darkened, and she squirmed away.

“None of that!”

“There's something different about her. She's not stuffed any longer.”

Griselda bit her lip.

Darlington shook his head. “I'm no good at this sort of female thing. But you can't blame me for not seeing
that,
” he said in her ear. “If she'd looked like this in the first month of the season, I could have called her a sausage, a cow, or the entire herd, and not a man would have paid attention to me.”

“Now I want you to dance with her,” Griselda said, beating down an impulse to drag him in the opposite direction.

He glanced over. Josie was playfully rapping one of the gentlemen on the knuckles. “I don't want to. She's in fashion, Griselda. That's Skevington at her right. Hell, maybe she'll marry him. He's got a sweet little estate, and a title coming when his uncle cocks up his toes.”

Griselda blinked.

“You don't want me to take her away from Skevington. He looks entranced.”

“Josie doesn't,” Griselda remarked.

“A problem of a different nature. But she will not be
entranced by me either.” And he pulled Griselda gently but firmly in the other direction.

“Why wouldn't she be entranced by you?” Griselda asked, feeling queer as she asked it. But she might as well be straightforward. “Josephine has a very large dowry.”

“My father informed me of that before the season began,” he said, making swiftly for the door to the ballroom. “In fact, he was under the distinct impression that I would be able to get even more money out of Felton than has been offered. It is unfortunate that I have a low tolerance for boredom.”

“Josie is not boring! She is one of the cleverest, most witty young women I know.”

“They're the worst kind,” Darlington said. “It's exhausting to have to reply to pert comments made by a woman in her early years. They expect so much.”

“But you, of all people,” Griselda protested, “should be able to snap back a reply.”

“In that respect I am rather an amateur,” Darlington said. He slowed down now that they were in the hallway.

“Where on earth are we going?” Griselda asked. She was trying to think of a clever remark to make, and she couldn't think of a single thing to say.

“A place I discovered the last time I was in Lady Mucklowe's house, for the Byron reading, ages ago.”

“I missed the reading,” Griselda said. There was something terribly exciting about holding hands in the middle of a crowded party. Of course, no one would possibly know who she was. Not only did she have the mask, but her hair was not in its usual ringlets, and she was wearing a thoroughly scandalous gown. She didn't even feel like herself.

Everyone would know who Darlington was, though. There was no disguising those curls and his lean, lithe figure.

They were half running down a corridor now, obviously a
passageway reserved for servants. “Charles,” Griselda said, trying not to pant. Only old women panted. “Where are we
going
?”

“The kitchens, of course,” he said. And there they were, in a low-ceilinged kitchen, paved in flagstones. It was full of servants, darting to and fro, preparing for the supper that would be put on at two in the morning. No one even glanced at them.

“Come on,” Darlington said, and pulled her between a chef, two cooks, and four scullery maids. “The back door.”

They were outside. It was oddly quiet, with just a muffled roar from behind the closed door, as if the ocean were contained on that side.

“How very, very lovely,” Griselda said. It was an old garden, with high brick walls separating it from the larger formal gardens that stretched behind the house. The old red brick was overhung with white burnet roses that could be dimly seen from the light pouring from the kitchen windows.

Griselda began to pick her way down the uneven little walk between beds of early carrots, lettuce, and some bluish-purple leaf that she couldn't identify.

Darlington followed her. “An enormous crop of horseradish,” he said, glancing to the right.

A large red cat gave them the arrogant, slant-eyed glance of a born mouser, jumped the wall and disappeared.

They walked all the way to the end of the garden where the roses hung, their stems tangled into a mat as heavy as horse blankets on prize thoroughbreds. In the very back there was a little wooden bench.

“This garden seems so familiar,” Griselda said slowly. “I know! Didn't Hellgate have a tryst in a kitchen garden? Oh, Darlington, was it you? I have been beginning to believe Hellgate is modeled on my brother.”

“Absolutely not!” Darlington said. “I have never done anything indiscreet in a kitchen garden. You called me Charles a moment ago.”

“A momentary indiscretion,” she said, “should never be followed up by more of the same.”

“But I want more of the same.”

“Life is full of wants.”

He was cupping her face in his long fingers. “Hush,” he said, and his face came toward hers in that one moment before she closed her eyes and gave in. Thoughts were flying around in her mind like trapped birds:
She shouldn't! They shouldn't! They might be seen!

“I'm going to take off your mask,” he murmured against her mouth. There was something almost angry in the way he was kissing her. It was an insistent, possessive kiss, the kind a man gives when he wants to say something without words.